Ugly repercussions of the beautiful game

Regular readers of my personal blog will know I love football,
though the game these days is not what it used to be (but then again what is?).
For lovers of the beautiful game and especially those in Europe, the World Cup
is the ultimate four weeks of summer football. Summer is usually a depressing
time for football fans, with no games to watch. We scour daily newspapers,
airwaves and pubs for the latest gossip on who is going where and for how much,
and we can squeal at the outrageous sums our beloved heroes are paid and curse
those who betray us by leaving for the enemy camp.

So the World Cup is a welcome release from the mundane
daily football-free life of June and July. The next World Cup - just in case
there are a few people out there who don't know - will be held in 2010 in South
Africa. South Africa has been preparing for the games for the past six years,
building and refurbishing stadiums, hotels, roads, and undergoing all kinds of
'beautification' exercises which include relocating people from their homes and
generally tearing down anything that looks remotely 'poor'. In fact, the 2010
World Cup has become part of the war against the urban poor; thousands have
been evicted from their homes in the 10 World Cup cities, and more evictions
are expected. This war has led to many shack-dwellers refusing to vote, as one
website reports:

'The residents, wearing T-shirts bearing the slogan "No
Houses, No Land, No Vote", said COPE (the Congress of the People party) went as
far as to offer to provide an advocate to help them in their court battle
against their eviction... There are no election posters here... Anti-Eviction
Campaign secretary Kareemah Linneveldt said they told parties not to put up
posters because they would have no interest in elections until they had proper
housing.

"For 13 months we have lived on the pavement and not a
single politician visited us. Now everyone is offering us help," she said.'

The irony of the World Cup-led gentrification in South
Africa is that the origins of football in Britain lie in the working class
heartlands of its cities and towns. Although the game has changed and many
working people are excluded from live matches due to the outrageous cost of
tickets, 99 per cent of football grounds remain in highly residential areas and
are still very much part of the community with pubs, cafés and shops catering
to the local fans.

It's not just housing that is being swept away in the
interest of gentrification in South Africa. The old street market in Warwick
Road, Durban is being targeted for bulldozing, to be replaced by yet another
monolithic lifeless shopping mall. Earlier this week members of the World Class
Cities for All in Durban held a protest walkabout around the market.

'It is as if eThekwini municipality knows full well that
this municipal plan to dispose of a historic public asset in order to build yet
another Western-style shopping mall in Durban runs counter to the interests of
the poor and working-class communities of the city. It can only benefit the
interests of the private sector property predators who have their eyes on this
piece of prime public land,' reported Streetnet.org.za.

Last week I was at an event in London where one person
was praising the Lagos State Governor for 'cleaning up' the city, which
included bulldozing squatter camps along the Ibadan Expressway. I was in Lagos
at that time - one day the camp was there, the next it had been set on fire and
bulldozed along with all the belongings the residents - men and women, old and
young - could not carry as they ran away. Where had these people gone? How
would they live now that they were a dispersed and displaced community? No one
seemed to care. They only cared that they were gone and that it was wonderful
now that Lagos was clean and tidy. I will find it hard to watch the South
African World Cup knowing how many people have lost their homes and their
livelihoods, not for the beautiful game but for selfish and unjust city
planners for whom the poor are just an old football to be booted off the pitch
with no care as to where it lands.

Another fantastic example of relocation for corporate and government interest - reminds me of the photo essay ’175’ by Gilles Sabrie, regarding the rising water level as a result of the dams in China and the resulting displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.

About the author

Sokari Ekine is a Nigerian social justice activist and blogger. She writes an awardwinning blog, Black Looks,
which she started in 2004, writing on a range of topics such as LGBTI
Rights in Africa, gender issues, human rights, the Niger Delta, Haiti
and Land Rights. She is a IRP 2013 Fellow.

New Internationalist reports on issues of world poverty and inequality. We focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and the powerless worldwide in the fight for global justice. More about our work